Upheaval in Your Lifetime: Global Climate Change Ed.
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Think about what this means in the social sense:
Hundreds of millions of Africans and tens of millions of Latin Americans who now have water will be short of it in less than 20 years. By 2050, more than 1 billion people in Asia could face water shortages. By 2080, water shortages could threaten 1.1 billion to 3.2 billion people, depending on the level of greenhouse gases that cars and industry spew into the air._Death rates for the world's poor from global warming-related illnesses, such as malnutrition and diarrhea, will rise by 2030. Malaria and dengue fever, as well as illnesses from eating contaminated shellfish, are likely to grow.
_Europe's small glaciers will disappear with many of the continent's large glaciers shrinking dramatically by 2050. And half of Europe's plant species could be vulnerable, endangered or extinct by 2100.
_By 2080, between 200 million and 600 million people could be hungry because of global warming's effects.
All my life, numbers relating to the impact of global warming and climate change have been changing, retooled to reflect changes coming closer and closer to our lifetimes. When I was young, these changes were often believe to be coming "in a few centuries." Today, predictions suggest that great changes will happen in time for the scientists who predict them to experience them first hand. Given all the nature of Republican and corporatist "science" discourse and disinformation, I'm still wary that even these dire reports we hear today will be modified further still. I certain plan and act as if they will.
The global social order as we know it is not prepared to withstand intact megadeaths and hundreds of millions of displaces people.
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Once Upon A Time
We were drilled on the hazards of population explosion, at that time charged on teh account of the Third World countries. In my deeply cynical moments, I think that the wingnut authoritarian view of the solution is letting global warming get out of hand.
Ruth
that's not cynical, ruth, that's perfectly in keeping
with the authoritarian mindset. note how much of the damage will be greater in areas where there are lots of pesky brown people. authoritarians believe that they'll all be invited to cheney's ranch in wyoming, safe and sound and high and dry. i suppose a goodly number of them believe they'll be raptured up in time to avoid the worst social upheaval.
but my point is for the rationally minded, who understand that mother nature doesn't care about ideology or those who "make their own reality." hundreds of millions of people without potable water = revolution, by whatever other name it may be called. millions of people without 1/2 the current plant population = revolution. and so on. it makes me so angry that anti-climate change morons don't understand that so much of what makes their lives easy and comfortable is the result of labor and resources that come from elsewhere. but they will, and the hard way.
That time has arrived
... for the water wars here in N.TX. Where I live, there's good access to lots of water, and we've had no water restrictions imposed. In Dallas, there's a need to develop more water resources, and city powers are presently involved in a dispute with a nearby wildlife/nature sanctuary. Dallas wants the water, of course, and I just suspect they're going to manage to drain away the conservation area. And I know the city is eyeing our lake.
This is another reason that the rational population needs to take back control from the criminal elements.
Ruth
ever notice
that from the mid nineties to about 2005 there were annual reports of Antarctic ice break up?
None new this winter.
I wonder if the post-Katrina clampdown of Party officers in the NOAA has anything to do with that? And oh, by the way, the economy's improving too!
Sure...
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky
Internal memorandums
Internal memorandums
circulated in the Alaskan division of the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service appear to require government biologists or other employees traveling in countries around the Arctic not to discuss climate change, polar bears or sea ice if they are not designated to do so.
The sample memorandums, described as to be used in writing travel requests, indicate that the employee seeking permission to travel “understands the administration’s position on climate change, polar bears, and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to these issues.”